Alderman proposes $25 bike registration tax | Chicago Tribune

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  • Jessica Smith rides through the intersection of Milwaukee Avenue and Desplaines Street in Chicago on Wednesday. Smith said she was prepared to flout the rule if Chicago aldermen passed a plan for an annual bike registration fee.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's vision of Chicago as a bike-friendly metropolis found itself in the cross hairs of an alderman's proposal for a $25 bike tax Wednesday.
South Side Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, floated a plan to charge bike owners an annual $25 registration fee as a way to raise millions of dollars next year and provide an alternative to the mayor's proposal to hike cable television taxes to bring in about $9 million. Dowell also said she wants to require bikers to take a "rules of the road" safety class.
Emanuel, who this month led a bicycle tour of the Logan Square neighborhood as part of Chicago Ideas Week, said he would look at Dowell's plan. But he then linked his pro-cyclist agenda with recent success in drawing technology firms to the city, and essentially laid out why he almost certainly won't support the idea.

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